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Eating fruits and vegetables is strongly associated with peak mental well-being, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

David G. Blanchflower, Andrew J. Oswald and Sarah Stewart-Brown have written one of the first studies on the potential influence of the different kinds of food people eat on feelings of happiness.

Using data covering 80,000 randomly selected British individuals along with seven accepted measures of well-being, they found that happiness and mental health rise in proportion to the number of daily servings of fruit and vegetables, peaking at 7-8 servings of 2.8 ounces each.

The pattern remains "remarkably robust" when adjusted for a large number of other demographic, social and economic variables, the study found.

Even after isolating confounding variables, it was found that individuals consuming at least 7 servings a day were 2.7 percent happier than those who eat almost no fruit and vegetables.

The authors note that the rise in life satisfaction is larger than "being a non-smoker [1.9 percent], is only a little less than that from being married [3.6 percent], and in absolute size is more than half the coefficient of having a longstanding illness [negative 4.3 percent]. Being unemployed, which is known from well-being research to have routinely one of the largest effects in happiness equations, is associated with approximately [negative 9 percent]."

The scientists conclude that thinking about the types of foods we consume may be valuable for governments concerned with the ultimate happiness of their citizens.

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If you want to do your own study of this sort of thing - seeing if eating vegetables or not smoking really does make you happier, there's a beautiful iPhone app available for tracking your happiness over time. It's called Happiness.